


I'd Walk To You If I Had No Other Way

by blackorchids



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: Aged up characters, College, Endgame Lucas Friar/Maya Hart, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Future Fic, Healthy Relationships, Long-Distance Relationship, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:06:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23665846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackorchids/pseuds/blackorchids
Summary: Some weeks, Lucas only makes it through so he has the pleasure of watching Maya paint on a tiny little screen, fifteen hundred miles away.Mandatory long-distance lucaya fic!
Relationships: Isaiah "Zay" Babineaux & Lucas Friar & Maya Hart & Riley Matthews & Farkle Minkus & Isadora Smackle, Lucas Friar/Maya Hart
Comments: 10
Kudos: 90





	I'd Walk To You If I Had No Other Way

**Author's Note:**

> Uh, this is for **Logonthefire** who prompted me "struggling with long-distance lucaya" ~~seventy seven days ago~~. Firstly, sorry for the (frankly) embarrassingly long wait, secondly, sorry that this is not quiiiiite the prompt you asked for (I kind of veered away from the ending there)
> 
> title from the best song that has ever been written, _hey there deliliah_

College is hard. Lucas had known that from the get go, had seen enough movies and made enough older friends and watched enough cousins and possessed enough common sense to know that college was hard. But, somehow, even still, he’s wholly unprepared for how completely impossible it seems sometimes.

His double major is nothing to laugh about, and on good days when he’s studied enough that week and he finds his shoes on the first try and his professors only call on him when he for sure knows the answer, he loves it.

On bad days, he contemplates dropping out and moving into the wilderness and letting her majesty, Mother Earth reclaim his body.

He mostly has bad days.

It had been a tough decision to go to college back in Texas when most of his core group of friends were planning on staying in the state, and sometimes his chest _burns_ with shame when he thinks about the fact that he did it just so his dad would help pay for it, like he’s still letting his father have so much control over him. But it’s smart too, and he has a sticky note with Maya’s loopy handwriting saying just that taped above his desk because the sticky had long since faded. He looks at it when studying seems fruitless and deadlines surge closer too fast for comfort, and it helps, that physical reminder of something else that he knows but doesn’t _know_.

Maya helps too. Making the choice to go long-distance when they’d dated scarcely more than half of their senior year of high school had been another one of those horrible choices, but this one was far and away the easiest to make and the only one he felt confident about _always_. They text and snapchat all day every day, and they have a long-standing Thursday-night FaceTime date night, though Maya always blocks him on twitter when he calls it that to her face.

Some weeks, Lucas only makes it through so he has the pleasure of watching Maya paint on a tiny little screen, fifteen hundred miles away. The sound of her breathing is thrown off by the tinny microphone of her too-old iPhone, but it is nearly as comforting as it is in person, and no matter how many deadlines loom, Lucas always feels the tension drain from between his shoulder blades when her dorky contact picture shows up on his screen.

FaceTiming Maya helps, but it doesn’t mean that Lucas isn’t looking forward to spring break. In the final week leading up to it, he’s so preoccupied with studying for his two exam-based midterms that he thinks nothing of it when he and Maya keep missing one another, playing phone-tag with each other, leaving breathless, thirty-second voicemails that mostly amount to _sorry I missed you, love you_.

He feels like a zombie when he walks out of his last midterm, hopes that all of his studying had been worth it, hopes Dr. Martinez will like and appreciate his extra credit essay on comfort animals, but he scarcely has an extra minute to wish his roommate a good spring break while he grabs his pre-packed duffle and his travel papers, American Airlines app on his phone and already opened to his ticket. 

Security is a nightmare, and Lucas almost misses his boarding, tries to find it in himself to regret purchasing a ticket for the same day his exam is finished instead of giving it a security blanket of twenty four hours. When he’s buckled into his seat, feeling cramped and too-big for his space, he can’t make himself think that he’d have been better off waiting. An extra few hours in New York with his friends and Maya are completely worth the stress.

Before he switches his phone onto airplane mode, he sees that Maya has sent him an 8-ball request, and he takes his shot, sinking one of her striped balls by mistake, before he thumbs off the screen.

Turbulence is horrible, and Lucas has a headache from the air pressure change and is a little sweaty and gross from the too-high temperature mixed with too-cramped seating, and when he lands, half a dozen texts from his mom pour into his phone, her complaining that he had forgotten to text her when he boarded distracting him enough that he doesn’t notice he hasn’t got any other messages to reply to.

Lucas calls his mom, listens to her breathless happiness at having her son in the same city as her again, however short a visit it might be, and she tells him that Jimmy is already waiting in the arrivals’ car lane, that they’ll head back to the apartment first so Lucas can wash up before they have a late little family dinner at the Italian place on the corner.

His mom’s blue sedan is easy enough to spot amongst the silver and black ubers and the yellow taxis, and Lucas is glad to hug his mom’s boyfriend tight in greeting, scoffing when Jimmy starts in on his _mom spiel_ about how Lucas has grown, and looks like he needs to eat some more and a whole bunch of other stuff that his mom will definitely say to him unironically when he gets home. When Jimmy’s done with that, he laments that Lucas will be unable to go with him to the Yankees’ home opener, which is scheduled for the Monday after Lucas flies back.

“Was hoping you’d finally get to see some _real_ ballplaying,” Jimmy teases, and Lucas pretends to vomit in disgust.

“Go Astros,” Lucas says mildly, and Jimmy swears up and down that that kind of talk won’t be allowed, dramatic and horrified and trying not to let Lucas see his rueful grin. It’s an old, familiar argument, but it still has Lucas laughing and riled, and as they drive into the city, Lucas feels more at home than he has in months.

*

In the morning, he meets up with Farkle for breakfast, and the pair of them certainly look a sight as Farkle, in expensive slacks and shirt-and-tie combo, takes a sweatpants-clad Lucas to a very pricey brunch facility. It’s so good to catch up with him, Lucas thinks as he dumps too much syrup on his waffles like always. Farkle might be halfway to taking over the world, but he always makes time to hang out with his _little people_ friends. The whole group will see one another on Tuesday, and likely at least once more after that before Lucas goes back, but after a lot of inter-dating, they’d figured out that individualized friendship time was also important.

Still, Lucas is pleased to hear that Riley is loving her new job, and holds no grudges against Farkle for marrying her. They talk movies and sitcoms and the stupidity of the new, higher fees to ride the subway, and eat way too much gourmet breakfast food, leaving their waitress a hefty tip and aimlessly trying to work off some of the extra calories by walking back towards Farkle and Riley’s building.

Lucas checks his phone a couple of times, but Maya has only sent him a handful of angry emojis after he finally beat her in their fourth 8-ball rematch. She can’t be too upset: Lucas can count on one hand how many times he’s managed to scrape up a win against her in any iPhone game. Maya is insanely good at everything, from WordsWithFriends to stupid little racing games to any and every rendition of the late ( _iconic_ , Lucas) FlappyBird original. Maya has beaten him at 8-ball alone upwards of a hundred times, but they still like to pretend it’s a challenge.

From Farkle’s building, he hugs his friend goodbye, passes on well-wishes to Riley, who was due home in a few hours, and hails a cab the old-fashioned way, texting some friends from college and just relishing in being back in his city.

Then he has to sit back and consider the fact that he now considers New York _his city_. Maya can never know.

Speaking of, Lucas frowns at his unopened snaps next to Maya’s name, their embarrassingly long streak count glaring at him. He swipes up and over to his messages, confirms that she hasn’t yet replied to his casual request for dinner the following night. He frowns some more, wrinkling his nose even as he lets himself into his mom and Jimmy’s apartment. He knows Maya likes to turn her phone off when a deadline is looming and just leave her favorite Studio Ghibli lo-fi music playlist echoing through her place while she works, but he also doesn’t remember her mentioning anything recently.

He heads over to Farkle and Riley’s for a very late dinner and some exciting Mario Kart competitions. Riley talks a mile a minute for several hours and Lucas has missed her so much, relishes in hearing all of the horribly awkward and exciting things that fill each of her days from dawn to dusk. Riley lives in the kind of world where everything is momentous, and it makes for great stories after the fact. 

They get a little tipsy on wine and whiteclaws and Lucas texts his mom to tell her he’s spending the night, and runs Riley off of Rainbow Road half a dozen more times before they go to sleep, way too late, the only point of contact from Maya coming in right before their streak is about to expire, a plain black screen with a few of her exhausted bitmojis. Farkle and Riley get it too, because it’s a generic streaks-send. Lucas is not offended, but he is a little concerned.

On Monday, Lucas heads over to Topanga’s with his mom, so he can say hi to Riley’s parents and tease Auggie a little bit about his eighth grade winter formal and hopefully get a heaping box of franzbrötchen, made from Mrs. Svorski’s old family recipe.

Katy takes his order and hugs him over the counter, and when she brings him his _enormous_ box of German croissants, she sits in the booth-seat across from him and makes him talk about his classes for her fifteen.

“Oh, you know Maya,” she tells him in her wispy, fond voice when he “Always leaves projects to the last minute.”

“She didn’t mention anything, though,” he tells her, ripping into the pastry and inhaling the warm, cinnamon scent. “This is just her figure-drawing mid-term, right?”

“Oh, no,” Katy corrects, straightening up importantly. “My baby girl is working on three pieces for a special program she got accepted into for the MOMA!” she tells him, pronouncing it like moo-mah. “They’re having a little soiree art exhibit event for their summer interns.”

Lucas’ awe and congratulations come pouring out of his mouth on auto-pilot, but he also sits back in his seat, a little stunned that he hadn’t heard a single noise about either the application or the acceptance letter from Maya. He’s so proud of her he could burst, but he also feels a little off.

Maya is notoriously bad about sharing important information: she had once come to school with a nose ring and, when asked about her weekend, had only mentioned watching _Dancing With The Stars_ reruns. Lucas knows this, and has lived with his girlfriend’s oddities for almost half his life, but he still wishes he’d known. 

Katy doesn’t notice where his head is, talks about an extra position she’s landed in a sitcom being filmed locally, texts him the picture she’d taken of the flier and kisses him on the head before she heads back towards the counter, clearing a nearby table on her way.

At home, Lucas googles _what do people wear to art exhibits_ and debates between two different button down shirts, tries to decide whether his dark-wash jeans are nice enough or if he should dig out the slacks he wore at his dad’s wedding the previous summer, and then he calls an uber.

*

The museum is very crowded, a dozen different styles of art displayed, the halls filled with hipster couples and fancy-looking older people alike. Lucas tries to take his time with it, following arrows and reading descriptions and pretending he knows what he’s talking about when strangers try and discuss with him.

It’s very easy for him to realize he’s finally made it to Maya’s section, recognizes her work well before he spots Katy and Shawn holding hands and admiring a cityscape that looks taken over by the wild. Lucas stares at a dark blue canvas with two bright orbs on opposite corners. When he gets closer, he can sort of make out the faint lines that connect the orbs, can see other, smaller orbs that are closer in color to the blue of the background. 

It makes Lucas feel kind of lonely, even before he reads that she’s called it _distance between us_ , all lowercase like the way she texts. 

He turns away from the painting, feeling some kind of way, and notices her across the way. Maya’s in a floaty black dress with those big sleeves she favors, talking to some guy in slacks and the same too-expensive shirts Lucas’ dad favors.

He watches her laugh and tilt her head the way she does when she’s trying to get guys to buy her free drinks, shakes his head a little at her. The guy she’s talking to is clearly buying into it, Lucas can tell even from this distance, and he hopes she’s about to swindle the guy out of too much money for one of her cityscape paintings.

He hovers by , trying not to distract her and trying not to look too closely at the painting in equal measure

“The hat’s just for me, isn’t it?”

Lucas whirls to stare at the little blonde demon at his side that he calls his girlfriend, notices her smirk before anything else.

“That’s awful presumptuous, ma’am,” he says, drawling his vowels out the way she likes. Maya scoffs, slapping the brim of his cowboy hat down so that it covers his eyes and only after he yelps in protest does she tug him down by the collar to kiss him smack on the mouth, twisting a little so she doesn’t get smacked in the face by his hat.

“I’m so happy to see you,” She whispers while he’s still blinded, and he pulls the hat up off his head and tucks it gently over her hair. She composes herself once he’s looking her in the eye again, and Lucas rolls his eyes at her. Abruptly, she seems to notice which painting he’s been hovering in front of and her nose wrinkles in apparent distaste.

“Why are you looking at this one?” she asks, and he blinks at her.

“It’s nice,” he says uncertainly, and she frowns at him before edging closer and pulling one of his arms around her shoulders, leading him past a few more pieces towards the ones he hadn’t yet looked at. There’s a cluster of sketches on textured white paper all pinned to the same board at the end of her set, and she watches his face as he looks at each of them: the couch in Topanga’s, the window seat in Riley’s bedroom, a few seats on the subway. In the middle, on the biggest sheet of paper, is a sketch of two school desks, one in front of the other. 

Lucas knows instantly that they’re the seats in Mr. Matthews’ classroom, where hand Maya had sat in conjunction with one another for so many years. He doesn’t claim to be artistic at all, but it’s hard not to understand the meaning she’s trying to get at.

She lets go of him, stepping back so she can hug him from behind and press her face into the center of his back, between his shoulder blades. He reaches behind him to awkwardly clasp his hands on her hips, holding her to him and almost missing it when she starts mumbling, even though he’s used to her inability to be sincere while maintaining eye contact.

He holds on tight and listens hard.

“Distance doesn’t mean anything when it’s you, Huckleberry,” she tells his spine. “It’s always been you.”

**Author's Note:**

> [hi](http://www.rosalinesbenvolio.tumblr.com/)


End file.
